A model writer

This evening I'm going to use your post to highlight some of the great things about your writing in English, Antonio!

One of the ways you construct complex sentences is by adding more information about a noun, or phrase, using relative clauses. I talked about relative clauses in a post published on July 20. In your post today you introduce several relative clauses with the pronouns who and which. Here are four excellent examples:

'I’d like to say ‘ciao’ to Lizeth from Argentina, who always comments on my posts';

' ‘L’ordine dei Certosini’ is the monastic order which monks who lived in Certosa belonged to';

'a student who’s really interested in learning English should answer all the questions which are blogged by the teacher'.

'‘Antonio de Paula’, who you mentioned in your comment, is ‘Sant’Antonio da Paola’, which means ‘St Anthony from Paola’'.

Another thing I like about your writing is how COHESIVE it is. Your sentences are well linked to each other and this makes your argument very easy to follow. A good example is the following passage, in which I have italicised your 'links',

'In my opinion a big disadvantage of learning via a ‘blog’ is, as you’ve already said, the lack of real-time feedback. On the other hand, the ‘blog’ approach has a lot of advantages! In fact it makes you able to write and send your posts whenever and wherever you prefer'.

The first link, 'as you've already said' is a link to something outside your text, in this case, my post yesterday. Your second link, 'on the other hand', connects and contrasts your second sentence (advantages) with your first (disadvantages). Your third link, 'it', connects your third sentence to your second by referring back to the subject (blog) of the second sentence. These 'links' provide the 'glue' that sticks your argument together very effectively.

In talking about your use of 'shortly' and 'briefly', you ask, 'do students of English frequently make this kind of mistake?' I think that the (very interesting) answer to this question is that I don't know. In my experience, English language classrooms are very busy places. Teachers don't always have a chance to discuss with students exactly what they are trying to say and how best to say it in English. Even in academic writing classes I don't seem to have very much time to work with individual students on their writing. An advantage of the blog is that I DO have time: to think about your writing; to ask you to explain what you mean; to look at dictionaries and grammar books. You also have time to answer, as you say yourself in your post today.

I'd like to think more about how blogs can be used in language teaching... Thanks for your thoughts today!

See you tomorrow.

Rachel

Thanks for all your contributions. This blog has now closed and can no longer accept new comments.